Oskar Schindler

I had promised myself that I wont write another post after the last post but the circumstances (read Watching the movie Schindler’s List) forced me to write another one and try as hard as I can, I cant stop myself from writing this post.

Starting with it, first of all I would like to thank all my friends who advised me to watch this movie and I suggest you too should see the movie, it’s a bit long (3 hrs) but if you can invest your time in watching some crappy two and half hour Hindi movies then you should see this movie too.

I am somehow amazed that prior to this day, I was unaware of such a great humanitarian deed by a person. The media and the world of books always depict the atrocities and inhuman deeds which were done by the Nazis during the WWII period but feats like this are never highlighted much. Why don’t they bring out the goodness remaining in the world and try to paint a bright picture of the world if it can be done.

For the information, Oskar Schindler was a German businessman and a member of the Nazi party who saved about 1100 Jews from the Holocaust, who came to be known as Schindlerjuden (Schindler’s Jews), trying all the ways straight and crooked, often violating many rules which could have landed him in trouble, losing a lot of money in bribing the officers just in a bid to save those Jews. I don’t know whether this is a historically correct fact or not but it was shown in the movie that he bought the 1100 Jews, paying money for each and every Jew he saved.

Very rarely for me, I am overcome by emotions, will just paste a few extracts of what people saved by him have to say about him

Poldek Pfefferberg

The man instrumental in telling the story of Schindler to the world, he tried all he could so that the world could know him and finally the world(atleast a part of it knows)

On his efforts to tell the story to the world, he says

“Schindler gave me my life, and I tried to give him immortality.”

“Oscar Schindler was a modern Noah”, “It was like the saying: To save one life is to save the whole world. Schindler called us his children. In 1944, he was a very wealthy man, a multimillionaire. He could have taken the money and gone to Switzerland … he could have bought Beverly Hills. But instead, he gambled his life and all of his money to save us …” “

Abraham Zuckerman

“He bowed to you, and he said good morning to you,” Zuckerman says, which may not sound like much of a favor, but to those beaten-down Jews, that small acknowledgement of their dignity gave them enormous hope.

Helen Beck

“We gave up many times, but he always lifted our spirits … Schindler tried to help people however he could. That is what we remember.”

Stories are too many , In the end I would just like to salute the great man. This might seem foolish and stupid to you but in this state of my mind , a feeling I am sure you will also share if you watch the movie once . This is the only thing I can do to tell the story to a further few, the least I can do.

I just can’t imagine how many blessings he must have got in his life with the lives he saved, he must sure have died a happy man.

Edit : I was told by a friend of mine that you will start hating Hitler after watching this movie, but I am glad that nothing of that sort happend and I still appreciate the man as much as I did before watching the movie. Ofcourse the cruelty to the Jews can never be justified but I have known this earlier so nothing new in this regard so no harm done to his reputation

definitely one of the best I have ever seen… the scene when he’s leaving in the end…. and he says “why i did have to keep this gold badge wtih me. this could have fetched me two more people” is very touching…
the seargent’s role is also well played…
even i din take any anti-hitler message out of it 🙂

Hey, stumbled across your blog and read this post on the serial “Hip Hip Hurray”.
Guess what, you can now watch the serial yet again on http://rajshri.com/zee/hiphiphurray/index.asp
It was my favourite serial when aired in 2000 🙂
Just thought I’d share 🙂

indeed one of the phenomenal movies….. surprised that it took you 3 years….. but you watched it at last….. i think you’ve already said volumes about the movie …. just wanna add ‘whatever he did, it’s still impossible to hate Hitler!!!!’